Panel A06: The Green Man

Where do you live (which road or which part of Trumpington)? Foster Road

How long have you lived in Trumpington? 22 years. I lived in Great Shelford for 12 years before that.

Can you tell us a bit about the subject of your panel?

I had given up stitching tapestries some time ago as my eyesight got worse but a friend suggested I give a panel a try so I went along to a few workshops. When the Green Man was on the list, I opted for this because my husband has been a regular visitor since we came to Cambridge in 1982, and since moving to Trumpington it is only a short walk away and he finds it a good place to relax.

We have had so many family celebrations there, birthdays and special occasions. Our daughter’s 21st birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary in particular in 1992. Our family in London would always come to see us to mark family birthdays and other occasions so we have so many happy memories that I thought it would be appropriate even though I rarely drink! Now the dynamics of our family have changed we continue to visit with the younger elements.

Of course, The Green Man is a key place for residents to meet and enjoy themselves and is an interesting historic building.

What materials & techniques did you use?

I decided initially to do cross stitch on aida. However, after one of the workshops, I was fascinated by the idea of doing an impressionistic design and I found it interesting, choosing colours of silk thread and trying different stitches for the image. It was challenging using glitter thread but

ijust about managed it. This was fun and I hope people will be able to pick out the glittering green man in the tree. The image has a foreground of the grey road so I thought it appropriate to put in some cyclists. I transferred some images of them using a t-shirt printing package on to some calico and appliqued it to the panel. Some people thought it was representing ‘The Tour de France’ but I just imagined a group of friends of an ethnic mix (representing the multi-culturalism of the expanding Trumpington) deciding to park their bikes in the car park and have well earned refreshments.

This website was created in January 2016 using a public art grant for the Trumpington 2016-a Stitch in Time project.

If you are new to Trumpington or new to stitching, this could be the group for you. We share our skills and enthusiasms at our weekly evening meetings, occasional workshops and Facebook conversations.

Our thanks to Stephen Brown for the use of his photos of Stitch in Time wallhangings.